BOOKS Small Packages I N an era when nobody has enough time to read and the world is run- ning out of trees, you would think small novels would be the thing. But the popular, or folk, sense of the novel is that to earn its keep it should be big, and, with few exceptions, the front tables at Waldenbooks groan under opuses thicker than a strong man's wrist. The three short novels about to be reviewed all come from Europe, and all, oddly enough, take place in France, though one is written in German. Per- haps France, with its fast trains, topless bathing suits, and habit of aphorism, is the last country in the West where anything can happen in less than two hundred pages. A great deal happens in Raymond Queneau's "Pierrot Mon Ami" (translated from the French by Bar- bara Wright; Dalkey Archive Press; $20), and yet as far as the inner development of the hero is concerned nothing happens. But this is Queneau's perennial point: the banality and cheer- ful nullity of experience. We always feel good reading a Queneau novel; he is the least depressing of the moderns, the least heavy, with something Mozartian about the easy, self-pleasing flow of his absurd plots. "Pierrot Mon Ami" ( what sort of transla- tion is that? what would be wrong with "Pier- rot My Friend" or "My Pal Pierrot"?) is cen- tered, fittingly, on an amusement park; Uni Park lies in the north- west of Paris, toward Argenteuil, near the Seine, in a raffish region of factories and vacant lots. Pierrot, when we first meet him, has been newly hired to work in the Palace of Fun, where his principal duty, and that of his col- leagues Petit-Pouce and Paradis, is to steer young women over the vents that blow their skirts up, - ! -.-/'-/'------" --- ,-......,1 } I :.': . '" \.. . J .;. ; ..:.... .... . \ .......'.:! '. . " ' , , .. . . '. . . .. . . . - . .' c-<f: . ) . . , . . . ._ __ (.I "" ) _ -- - \\ - . . . . , . -, :1\ "';"-' " :I.- Ì\"\tsrvd) - : IIIF' l-tll\ - W \ \ ,;i i?- ; f " r d,. > ..i.\" ,, ( l\ y- f ),. . - 0'"\ \':. _\ _ "\. \I"i2 ' ---' J J \11 \.: ::) . .'. (\.:""-:'-: -- - I ' - -- I ,, ) -___ :. .' _ J ". --;;;::. { . .' .... ---::::::----- -.....J""'-/'"'--"" , \ (( - --'""" .,.---... -/ \ ..... - <:-::-:':.:J ' -"::. \) : ). .---;::::::;-:, " - _.' c ." ". " ' '.' ..'... .... .. .... '.... ....: .. # ...-.. :.... .:. 1..... .-. eO'_.;:: , '" . " .' : 1 r.::'.:' ",,: :=. . -:" ". .:-. '1 .>;. . :..: . . .'.. : - ' .' "'- ".' " .... .... - - - "",:" . : '. ":',: . - .' " '.. . - ," . . . --.::::.. . " . . , .. ,. . '.Y '- .... . . ( .'>.:. - :. N\ANk.c1F --. to the edification and delight of paying voyeurs called "philosophers." Que- neau's preening, rather professorial language puts a strange glaze on this rude material: [In the Palace of Fun] maliciously-cal- culated indignities pursued the buffs' every step: staircases whose steps collapsed hor- izontally, planks that jumped up at a right angle or curved in and became a basin, a conveyor belt that moved in alternate directions, floors that consisted of strips shaken with a Brownian movement And more. Pierrot's job was to get the people out of this impasse. With the men, it was enough to give them a hand, but when a woman, terrified by this difficult passage, came along, you grabbed her by the wrists, you lugged her, you tugged her, and you finally plunked her down over an air vent that sent her skirts billowing up-the first treat for the philosophers, if this flurry revealed enough thigh Pierrot's task encounters obstruction, however, when some pimps accompa- nying their women cagily hold the bil- lowing skirts down, to the enragement of the philosophers, producing a small riot, with the result that the Palace of Fun is closed by the police. That 81 same evening, Pierrot falls in love with a girl, Yvonne, who turns out to be the daughter of Uni Park's propri- etor, Eusèbe Pradonet; Pierrot offends Pradonet by running him over with a bumper car, and is thereupon fired. His next unsuccessful job is as assistant to a fakir, CrouÏa Bey, whom Pradonet's mistress, Madame Prouillot, recog- nizes as the brother of her long-lost love, Jojo Mouilleminche. Our hero faints when CrouÏa Bey jSidi Mouille- minche begins to pierce his cheeks with hatpins, and so he loses that job. His next involvement is with the mys- terious Arthème Mounnezergues, who owns a piece of land, in a corner of U ni Park, on which he has erected a chapel to the memory of a Poldevian prince, who might, it turns out, be the reput- edly dead Jojo Mouilleminche, who also seems to be a Monsieur V oussois, an animal trainer in the Midi to whom Pierrot, once again gainfully if briefly employed, is trucking a wild boar called Pistolet and an ape named Mésange. There's much more to the "I'd like to say something to you, Miriam-strictly off the record, of course."